Sourcing is the process of finding resumes within the recruitment process. Recruiters, both third party and corporate, need to find qualified candidates for their open job orders, oftentimes with very unique or niche work experience.
Sourcing refers to the initial part of recruiting (actually finding the candidates through a variety of methods.) Some recruiters perform the sourcing function through to placement; other recruiting professionals specialize in only one aspect of the recruitment cycle. Professional recruiters who specialize only in the initial procurement of names and candidates are called sourcers. Many larger companies and specialist staffing firms employ teams of sourcing professionals that concentrate only on the initial procurement of candidates. The sourcers then “hand off” the candidates to a different department of team of recruiters which handle qualification, interview, and placement.
Sourcing is also more than specialized resume search and candidate name generation. Sourcing is also an integral part of any company’s overall hiring and talent acquisition strategy.
With the trend of globalization, sourcing strategy is at the forefront of recruiting issues. Recruiting talent in different countries and in different languages presents a very difficult challenge for any talent acquisition team. You can imagine that recruiting professionals would not know where to begin to find talent overseas in a market that they do not understand. In many cases, the sourcing team might be local to the actual hiring effort, and then send qualified candidates to a centralized corporate recruiting team.